Why Do We All Think We're So Cool When We're Young?
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To the OP- I think a lot of it is a lack of experience. Most young people have not had enough time to experience real misfortune.
Not long ago (a few weeks), I fell off my bike and busted my elbows. I was by no means a kid, but I walked out of that experience in a new appreciation for the people who can't button their coat or grasp a can of coke without pain.
To make matters worse, the painkiller the doc prescribed clogged my mind. I couldn't keep a schedule. Couldn't read. Couldn't write. So I also gained a new appreciation for my elders who need these things all the time. It's sort of Hell if reading and writing is your main form of entertainment.
My experience wasn't (and isn't presently) unusual. People go through temporarily debilitating fractures all the time. My point is that the younger you are, the less likely you are to have similarly painful experiences in any great amount. No bad break-ups. No dead friends. Nobody cheating you out of your money.
When you're a little older, you realize "old" people are not that far down the line from where you stand. You can see their wisdom because there is an element of shared experience.
Not long ago (a few weeks), I fell off my bike and busted my elbows. I was by no means a kid, but I walked out of that experience in a new appreciation for the people who can't button their coat or grasp a can of coke without pain.
To make matters worse, the painkiller the doc prescribed clogged my mind. I couldn't keep a schedule. Couldn't read. Couldn't write. So I also gained a new appreciation for my elders who need these things all the time. It's sort of Hell if reading and writing is your main form of entertainment.
My experience wasn't (and isn't presently) unusual. People go through temporarily debilitating fractures all the time. My point is that the younger you are, the less likely you are to have similarly painful experiences in any great amount. No bad break-ups. No dead friends. Nobody cheating you out of your money.
When you're a little older, you realize "old" people are not that far down the line from where you stand. You can see their wisdom because there is an element of shared experience.
Hey Everyone,
Pippy's "Cray Cray Bae Bae" thread got me thinking about my own teen/young adult years and how ironic they were.
Many people here who are familiar with my posts know that I was definitely not one of the "cool" kids in school. I was just a nerd who was usually kind of in the middle, talking to people from an array of different groups, but I was definitely not seen as one of the "in" crowd.
And yet... Why did I somehow think that compared to adults, I was just so cool?
Why did I roll my eyes at most anything they had to say, and question most everything that was ever taught to me at the time?
The inspiration behind this thread is a recent incident in which a 15-year-old family member declared, "Don't leave me here with all these old people!!!"
And then I had to look around... and realize... that I had become one of THOSE old people.
Why is it that most of us think we're so "cool" when we're young, and that "old people" around us don't know a thing?
(Everyone is welcome to post, including the younger people who regularly visit the singles forum--go ahead--you can tell us "old" people why we're uncool.) I would actually be pretty interested in your answers.
As I've gotten older, I think that for myself, I've come to realize that what I really dislike isn't a person's age, but when a person talks down to me. I am a much better student to someone who says, "Hey, we can both learn from each other," rather than the person who pats me on the head and says, "You're just a baby," (and plenty of people in their 60's and 70's say that to me.)
I have no problems with people having more wisdom and life experience and wanting to tell me about it--I'm just very cautious around anyone who sees my life and my own experiences as having no value to them in return. This being said, I have to give a shout out to Magenta, notmyown, Angela, and JesusLives--I have gone to them several times for advice about different things, and they are always respectful, very encouraging, and go out of their way to never make it sound like they're talking down to me (thank you ladies ever so much!)
I greatly appreciate older, wiser people who can lead in a respectful way because it often seems so rare.
My family has a friend who is in the triple digits as far as age, and that person could easily pat a 95-year-old on the head and tell them they're just a baby, too, but I have never heard this person do that, and I hope that I can be like that when I get older (actually, seeing as the young people here would already see me as old, I guess I'd better start practicing.)
I must admit that I have to fight myself to not have a condescending attitude as well, especially when I see a post from a 24-year-old lamenting that, "I have been single my whole life!!!" (It could be worse, sweetheart. You could be me...)
But I have met many young people who have already gone through enough heartache to cover 10 lifetimes, and so I know I need to keep asking God for help in remembering that we all have a story, and everyone has something valuable to share.
Why are we often so quick to dismiss what older people might have to teach or share with us?
Pippy's "Cray Cray Bae Bae" thread got me thinking about my own teen/young adult years and how ironic they were.
Many people here who are familiar with my posts know that I was definitely not one of the "cool" kids in school. I was just a nerd who was usually kind of in the middle, talking to people from an array of different groups, but I was definitely not seen as one of the "in" crowd.
And yet... Why did I somehow think that compared to adults, I was just so cool?
Why did I roll my eyes at most anything they had to say, and question most everything that was ever taught to me at the time? The inspiration behind this thread is a recent incident in which a 15-year-old family member declared, "Don't leave me here with all these old people!!!"
And then I had to look around... and realize... that I had become one of THOSE old people.
Why is it that most of us think we're so "cool" when we're young, and that "old people" around us don't know a thing?
(Everyone is welcome to post, including the younger people who regularly visit the singles forum--go ahead--you can tell us "old" people why we're uncool.
) I would actually be pretty interested in your answers. As I've gotten older, I think that for myself, I've come to realize that what I really dislike isn't a person's age, but when a person talks down to me. I am a much better student to someone who says, "Hey, we can both learn from each other," rather than the person who pats me on the head and says, "You're just a baby," (and plenty of people in their 60's and 70's say that to me.)
I have no problems with people having more wisdom and life experience and wanting to tell me about it--I'm just very cautious around anyone who sees my life and my own experiences as having no value to them in return. This being said, I have to give a shout out to Magenta, notmyown, Angela, and JesusLives--I have gone to them several times for advice about different things, and they are always respectful, very encouraging, and go out of their way to never make it sound like they're talking down to me (thank you ladies ever so much!)
I greatly appreciate older, wiser people who can lead in a respectful way because it often seems so rare.
My family has a friend who is in the triple digits as far as age, and that person could easily pat a 95-year-old on the head and tell them they're just a baby, too, but I have never heard this person do that, and I hope that I can be like that when I get older (actually, seeing as the young people here would already see me as old, I guess I'd better start practicing.)
I must admit that I have to fight myself to not have a condescending attitude as well, especially when I see a post from a 24-year-old lamenting that, "I have been single my whole life!!!" (It could be worse, sweetheart. You could be me...
) But I have met many young people who have already gone through enough heartache to cover 10 lifetimes, and so I know I need to keep asking God for help in remembering that we all have a story, and everyone has something valuable to share.
Why are we often so quick to dismiss what older people might have to teach or share with us?
From personal experience I've gone through many problems in my life, betrayals, bullying ect... sometimes it feels no one has suffered as much as me. Obviously that is not true. I'm not one of those who dismiss an old persons opinion, I feel I trust their judgement more than some person my age. I view it this way if I want some life advice I go to an older person. If I want some street smart advice (sorry it was the best way I can put it) or anything about pop culture then I go to a person my age since times are always changing and our generation has adapted to this era. BTW, I appreciate the part you said about not talking down to young people and dismissing our opinions. I believe that can turn off some young people from older people if they had been treated like that in the past.
Old people are cool. They have so many interesting stories to tell. I met an old lady at the supermarket. We were both waiting in line to pay at the counter and the line was long. She was eating peanuts and offered me some. Then we were both entertained as we began talking about so many things including the story of her life because I became curious and asked too many personal questions that she gladly answered.
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For myself as a teen me and my best friend knew we feel outside of the "cool" game. We were always broke. I Always had old, used cars and for years he didn't have one at all. We listened to unpopular music. We were both Christians, but he was a punk and I a metalhead. So we didn't blend in with the world or the church. Neither of us were cool or popular in school either.
So we created our own "cool", which basically was "poor is the new cool". Or "tore down" as we put it. Poor is cool, uncool is cool, junkie old cars are cool. Basically anything not cool was cool with us. He had a t-shirt that looked like York Peppermint Patty logo, but said Dork instead. I had a black shirt and in bold white letters it said LOSER.
Wasn't really a difficult attitude in the 90s. The whole big money thing was mostly relegated to the ghetto types still.
So we had to create our personal cool to be cool. We had fun though.
So we created our own "cool", which basically was "poor is the new cool". Or "tore down" as we put it. Poor is cool, uncool is cool, junkie old cars are cool. Basically anything not cool was cool with us. He had a t-shirt that looked like York Peppermint Patty logo, but said Dork instead. I had a black shirt and in bold white letters it said LOSER.
Wasn't really a difficult attitude in the 90s. The whole big money thing was mostly relegated to the ghetto types still.
So we had to create our personal cool to be cool. We had fun though.
You're still young. I'm 57 and don't feel old at all, especially when I make the same mistakes I made years ago. One thing about getting older as a Christian we become, (or should become), wiser. This actually makes you feel younger as you carry less weight, especially when it comes to making better choices.
I have no time for older people who look down on others simply because of their age alone and in the worst experience 'because you don't have this rep number, this amount of posts, you're not one of us, so I need to chastise you young lady!' That kind of immaturity I don't give the time of day to and have no respect for, not just in relation to those younger than their own, but from a personal perspective, it speaks nothing for their supposed years.
Wrong. As a sixteen year old I interviewed a Jewish couple in their 80's who had been part of World War II. I documented and recorded the experience and it's now in a local museum along with all their artefacts from that period. On the family side, I absolutely loved coming home to my grandparents after school and have had their own house as my second home growing up. Since I was young, I found my grandparents and elderly people like them in character, the most encouraging, loving sources of nurture that God could have ever blessed me with. This was the general consensus in my life from all the friends and family that I grew up with to today.
